My Madrileno teachertold me that the Spanish 'o' is always as in the English 'hot' –never as in 'rose'. Indeed that the latter vowel sound is adiphthong (ǝ+ u) and, to Spanish ears, that is how it sounds – not like an'o' at all.

SoI try to remember to keep my 'o's open – and pronounce MedinaSidonia to rhyme with Sonia etc. And I assumed that Segovia wouldrhyme with the Spanish word 'novia'.

Recently,however, I have heard Segovia pronounced by Spanish people the way wewould tend to pronounce it in the UK – with that 'ǝu'diphthong.

DidI mishear? Is this a sound somewhere between 'o' and 'ǝu'? Or does the 'ǝu'diphthong exist in Spanish after all?

I've done some formal study of Spanish phonology, and I know of no reason why the [o] of "Segovia" might give the auditory impression of a diphthong.
I want to advise speakers of American English not to be confused by the statements that Spanish [o] is like the "o" of English "hot" or "not",
and that it is not like the "o" in "go". These statements are for British consumption only.
The "o" of "go" in Am.Eng. is also diphthongized to some degree, but it's the best approximation we have for Spanish [o].
Better yet would be the "o" of "go" in Jamaican English.

The Spanish vowel sounds which can differentiate, ceteris paribus, one word from another (the "phonemes" of Spanish) are five. /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/ and /u/.
Unlike, say, in Italian, where the presence of a closed "e" vowel (/e/) or the presence of an open "e" vowel (/ɛ/) makes the difference between two words and the same applies for the closed "o" vowel (/o/) and the open "o" vowel (/ɔ/), nothing of this sort happens in Castillian Spanish. You can pronounce an open variety or a closer variety and nothing changes. Technically, linguists say that it's not possible to find two words — a "minimal pair" —in Spanish which have different meanings depending on the degree of opening of the above vowels.
Of course this is not to deny that in actual speech one may use an opener variety in certain words and a closer variety in others. Native speakers most probably won't even notice it.

GS
PS Italian has seven vowel morphemes when a syllable is stressed. Before the word stress and after the word stress the phonemes are reduced to five ("e" and"o" being always closed).

The Spanish vowel sounds which can differentiate, ceteris paribus, one word from another (the "phonemes" of Spanish) are five. /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/ and /u/.
Unlike, say, in Italian, where the presence of a closed "e" vowel (/e/) or the presence of an open "e" vowel (/ɛ/) makes the difference between two words and the same applies for the closed "o" vowel (/o/) and the open "o" vowel (/ɔ/), nothing of this sort happens in Castillian Spanish. You can pronounce an open variety or a closer variety and nothing changes. Technically, linguists say that it's not possible to find two words — a "minimal pair" —in Spanish which have different meanings depending on the degree of opening of the above vowels.
Of course this is not to deny that in actual speech one may use an opener variety in certain words and a closer variety in others. Native speakers most probably won't even notice it.

GS
PS Italian has seven vowel morphemes when a syllable is stressed. Before the word stress and after the word stress the phonemes are reduced to five ("e" and"o" being always closed).

Click to expand...

Well, in areas where the final gets swallowed, the preceding vowel gives you the clue about plurals or singulars.
In 'la casa' vs/'las casas' the second vowels are not the same.

"Well, in areas where the final gets swallowed, the preceding vowel gives you the clue about plurals or singulars.
In 'la casa' vs/'las casas' the second vowels are not the same."

Do tell me more about it: what vowel differentiates singular from plural. THANK YOU

GS

Click to expand...

It took me a while to believe it, but once you do/check a spectrogram, you'll see the aperture of the vowels is different enough to really make a difference. Speakers are not stupid, and don't destroy every inch of data they can use. Of course, I'm talking about native speakers. Someone else learning that stuff in Spanish, may believe the sounds are identical.

You mention a difference in the degree of openness of the /a/. Basing on your precious experience — you're both a native speaker and a linguist — would you consider /ə/ or /ʌ / or something in between?

About the Spanish [o], I want to mention an anecdote (which I hope is not irrelevant) that shows the Spanish [o] being heard as the O in American English "folks"
(I assume this is the same O of English "go" that has been mentioned).
American TV journalist Gwen Ifill is interviewing Mexican journalist José Carreño on July 3, 2000, after the election of Mexican president Vicente Fox. (See the transcript here.)

JOSE CARRENO: What will be the... How folks will negotiate the transition with Mr. Zedillo. That will be interesting.

GWEN IFILL: Really?

JOSE CARRENO: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: When you say... Excuse me one moment. When you say folks, you mean the people who just were recently booted out of power?

JOSE CARRENO: Well, Mr. Fox will have to negotiate a number of things with the government in place.

Click to expand...

Both Ifill and the transcriber heard "folks will negotiate" in Carreño's first statement, but he later says "Mr. Fox will have to negotiate",
pronouncing "Fox" as it would be said in Mexico, with [o].
Meanwhile Ifill and other Americans are pronouncing "Fox" with an open [a] vowel.

You mention a difference in the degree of openness of the /a/. Basing on your precious experience — you're both a native speaker and a linguist — would you consider /ə/ or /ʌ / or something in between?

Saludisimos.

GS

Click to expand...

Neither. It's lower than the schwa, and not stressed as the caret. Nobody will believe it, unless they check a decent number of spectrograms. People will still insist the vowels are the same... (meaning, the process is automatic).

Thank you, duvija. This is indeed very interesting.
A native speaker will normally not perceive any difference because there isn't supposed to be any difference (after all the writing doesn't change and the vowel is the same).
Perhaps a complete foreigner — but not a completely linguistically naive one — might perceive the quality of the "new" vowel.
From your description it reminds me of one vowel "a" in Romanian — sorry I don't have the appropriate diacritic — as in the word "fata", girl.

Thank you, duvija. This is indeed very interesting.
A native speaker will normally not perceive any difference because there isn't supposed to be any difference (after all the writing doesn't change and the vowel is the same).
Perhaps a complete foreigner — but not a completely linguistically naive one — might perceive the quality of the "new" vowel.
From your description it reminds me of one vowel "a" in Romanian — sorry I don't have the appropriate diacritic — as in the word "fata", girl.

The Romanian spelling for the word that Giorgio Spizzi mentioned is fată. The letter ă represents the sound schwa: [ə].

Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I've found out too, but I still can't get the sound right. It's possible it's very similar to that open vowel 'a'' , but we need transcriptions for all the other 4 vowels, because the plural in Spanish, with 's' come after any vowel. (I'm not sure if the inverted semicircle works for all vowels. Does it?).

I suspected the vowel in fată wouldn't satisfy duvija: I shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place.
So now we have a new problem, as it seems. As duvija rightly points out, "s-swallowers" pronounce four vowels in a manner which is different from the way each of them would be pronounced in classic Castillian, where there's no swallowing. Now, it'd be ridiculous to expect them to substitute one and the same vowel sound for all of them.

One question for duvija: when you mention "the inverted semicircle", what phonetic symbol are you referring to? Maybe to the schwa ([ə])?

Finally, I remember reading — before the Punic Wars, mind you — that while in Mexican Spanish there is a weakening of the vowel sounds (for example in buen(a)s noch(e)s) but final "s's" are fully pronounced, in quite a few other Latin American countries it is consonants which are reduced or even omitted altogether in certain positions — in Cuba, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, where the "s" is substituted for by a sort of aspirated "h" (ie, buena(h) noche(h)). This pronunciation, if I remember correctly, is also heard in southern Spain.
Now, is this the "swallowing"?

ă I was referring to this upper semicircle, that seems to be the spelling for the schwa, isn't it?
And 'the four vowels' are 'the other vowels', which with 'a' make up the five phonemes described for Spanish, without the phonetic differences.
And yes, in Mexican Spanish stuff is different.
In LatinAmerica the final 's' goes from zero to a full Mexican .
The story is that in a language that has only 5 canonical vowels, there is plenty of room to move them around in the vocallic space as much as we want, without confusing the listener.

I am still curious if there is somewhere that it's possible to hear how a speaker from Cuba or the DR or whereever pronounces "la casa" vs. "las casas" and/or similar pairs of words that use the other vowels.

My Madrileno teachertold me that the Spanish 'o' is always as in the English 'hot' –never as in 'rose'. Indeed that the latter vowel sound is adiphthong (ǝ+ u) and, to Spanish ears, that is how it sounds – not like an'o' at all.

SoI try to remember to keep my 'o's open – and pronounce MedinaSidonia to rhyme with Sonia etc. And I assumed that Segovia wouldrhyme with the Spanish word 'novia'.

Recently,however, I have heard Segovia pronounced by Spanish people the way wewould tend to pronounce it in the UK – with that 'ǝu'diphthong.

DidI mishear? Is this a sound somewhere between 'o' and 'ǝu'? Or does the 'ǝu'diphthong exist in Spanish after all?

Click to expand...

You shouldn't try to open your o's, at least not as much as the "o" in hot (RP). Spanish "o" is like the "or" in caught, only a bit shorter.

Go to this website and click on "Vocales" to hear the Spanish "o".
When people say that the Spanish "o" is like in "hot", not like in "go", they mean that it's a plain vowel, not a diphthong; there's no "glide" at the end of it, unlike in most dialects of English. But in terms of the quality of the sound, it may well be that the first component of the English "go"-diphthong is actually closer to the Spanish vowel than the English "hot"-vowel.
And of course in American English there's the "haht" pronunciation, which is absolutely unlike the Spanish one.

I'm sorry but I do not agree: If you take any vowel trapeze of English vowels (Daniel Jones's latest edition of the famous dictionary, for example) and collate it with that of the cardinal vowels, you'll see that the RP "o" of "hot", "spot", shock", etc. is extremely more open than any cardinal "o" — be it an open variety or, a fortiori, a closed one.
It is a common misconception among continental Europeans to consider that their own individual varieties of "open 'o' " can be used to represent British RP open "o". Phoneticians and phonologists have long abandoned the idea of even representing RP open "o" by means of the symbol of the inverted "c".

All the best.

GS
PS I don't know why, all of a sudden, I am not able to represent phonetic symbols...

[/I]I'm sorry but I do not agree: If you take any vowel trapeze of English vowels (Daniel Jones's latest edition of the famous dictionary, for example) and collate it with that of the cardinal vowels, you'll see that the RP "o" of "hot", "spot", shock", etc. is extremely more open than any cardinal "o" — be it an open variety or, a fortiori, a closed one.

Click to expand...

Hello, Giorgio

Excuse me but isn't the 'o' of 'hot' a cardinal vowel in itself?

Here's part of the table of Cardinal vowels:

6 [ɔ] open-mid back rounded vowel

7 [o] close-mid back rounded vowel

13 [ɒ] open back rounded vowel

[ɒ] is sometimes used for the vowel of "hot", "spot", “shock", “got” , etc. It's actually the symbol for Cardinal 13.
The vowel in question is located between this and Cardinal 6, so some transcribers prefer to use [ɔ] for “hot", "spot", shock" “got” , etc.

I'm sorry but I do not agree: If you take any vowel trapeze of English vowels (Daniel Jones's latest edition of the famous dictionary, for example) and collate it with that of the cardinal vowels, you'll see that the RP "o" of "hot", "spot", shock", etc. is extremely more open than any cardinal "o" — be it an open variety or, a fortiori, a closed one.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I've always thought, and considering that the Spanish "o" is not an open vowel, the most straightforward way for a Spanish speaker to learn the vowel in "hot" (RP) is to start with a Spanish "o" and try and make a habit of opening your mouth more than you would normally do until you are hard-wired to speak that way.

Yeah, that's what I've always thought, and considering that the Spanish "o" is not an open vowel, the most straightforward way for a Spanish speaker to learn the vowel in "hot" (RP) is to start with a Spanish "o" and try and make a habit of opening your mouth more than you would normally do until you are hard-wired to speak that way.

Exactly. For several years now English pronouncing dictionaries have recognized the inadequacy of cardinal /ɔ/ to represent the open "o" sound of "hot". Consequently they started using /ɒ/. Now, English /ɒ/ is far removed from — what I consider to be — the Castillian "o" of "bola", "otro". This is a much "higher" vowel, ie, a much more closed vowel sound than either /ɒ/ or /ɔ/. I also believe the degree of lip rounding and protrusion is by far stronger.
Then of course there may be individual, geographical, municipal differences, but I'm convinced that Spanish "o" is decidedly more closed even of Italian open /ɔ/ ("otto") and German /ɔ/ ("sollen"). Maybe I'd put it somewhere between Italian open /ɔ/ and Italian closed /o/ ("dove"), and nearer to the latter.